“That’s a pretty good way to describe it, yeah,” she said with a laugh.
He glanced at her. She saw his small, grim smile in the glow of the dashboard lights. “I guess I shouldn’t expect anything less.”
“Why’s that?” she asked.
“It had to be some unique circumstances. To make you,” he added, his gaze trained on the road again.
It was like a precise, electrical caress in the darkness.
She was so giddy with speed, so caught up in the promise of being with him on that country road as the warm, fragrant summer air rushed around them and the little car ate up the asphalt, that she momentarily forgot their tense parting last Friday night. She was so fascinated by the vision of his hands on the leather wheel that it took her a moment to register they’d come to a halt. She turned to him. He wore a small smile as he watched her unsuccessfully trying to smooth her windblown hair out of her eyes and cheeks. His thick, waving hair looked artlessly sexy, like it’d been fashioned to be caressed and whipped by the wind.
“That was amazing,” she told him. “You’re an excellent driver. How did you get so good?”
He shrugged, his hands still loosely holding the wheel. “My dad loved cars almost as much as I do.”
“Was he a mechanic as well?”
“Yes. And an engineer, although he was never formally trained as one. He put me behind the wheel when I was only six.”
“Six?” she repeated, shocked.
His quick, flashing grin made something leap deep inside her. “He’d put me in his lap to prop me up.”
They laughed. His low chuckle struck her as delicious in the warm, still air, his smile impossibly beautiful on such a typically aloof man. It was like a crack opened up on his cold surface and a bright light shone through. A tightness grew in her chest.
She realized she could see him because of several overhead lights. She blinked, recognizing the parking lot belatedly.
“Lookout Beach,” she said, giving up on her mussed hair and looking around. “My mother used to bring Amanda and me here when we were little.”
“Amanda? The sister you live with?”
Emma nodded.
“Is she a nurse, too?”
“No. She’s going to be a doctor. She starts medical school this fall.”
He studied her for a moment and then abruptly glanced toward the lake, the patrician, cool man returning. “Do you want to walk down? I want to talk to you about something.”
She nodded, too anxious and anticipatory to speak.
A minute later they stood at the rocky bluff overlooking the lake, he to the left of her and several feet away. The sound of the waves rhythmically hitting the shore lulled her a little. They both watched the black lake rippling in the distance. He seemed so lost in his thoughts, so intent, she started a little when he finally spoke.
“How come you didn’t go to medical school?” he asked.
“I didn’t want to. I wanted to be a nurse.”
“The kind of nurse that you are now?” he asked, perhaps a little delicately.
She glanced over at him and saw the slight puzzlement on his face. “Yes. A hospice nurse. That’s what I wanted from the first. I didn’t just fall into it by accident,” she said amusedly.
He frowned. “I didn’t mean to be offensive.”
She broke into soft laughter. “No, it’s not that. It’s just I’ve seen that expression a time or two—or a hundred—when I tell people what I do for a living.” She saw his slanting brows. “That puzzled expression you wore a second ago,” she clarified. “When people understand I actually chose to be a hospice nurse, that I don’t do it just because I couldn’t get another nursing job, they seem confused. Trust me, it’s a pretty good way to clear a room at a party, saying you’re a
hospice nurse.”
“I know what that’s like.”